"...it works just fine as another Fallout."
And that's pretty much all I wanted. Yes, I'm part of the problem, but nostalgia is a weird mistress. The theme and the lore forgives much for me.
I understand Fast Travel systems and appreciate that they are an attempt to solve a legitimate problem. But if Fallout is going to go through the trouble of making sure that all the music is diagetic- to better add to the verisimilitude of the game- it seems that they can do the same for the fast travel system.
Just off the top of my head: if I'm building a network of settlements, maybe I can upgrade them to have a system of horse posts. Fast travel can then be handwaved as spending time traveling between your own settlements, along routs that are safe enough to be boring. It even builds back into the theme of bringing civilization to the Wasteland. Win win!
Heck! It would even let you use different skills. Instead of Charisma being the only skill that lets you have a common crafting pool, maybe you'd be able to use Intelligence (because you know that logistics are important), or perception (because you see how to solve the problem), or... Something else?
Anyway. Good review as usual. I thought your original FNV review was fair (given you frustrating experience with bugs), but unfortunate (given that it's one of my favorite games of all time). I'm curious what you have to say about New Vegas now, with a much more stable game.
You rock! Thanks, Merc!
Fallout: New Vegas is the definitive Fallout for me. The way Obsidian built a vast network of choice and consequences brought the wasteland alive in ways unmatched by even Fallout 4. It was also my introduction to mods. But, yeah, once I was able to actually play it, I loved Fallout: New Vegas and it certainly cast a long shadow over Fallout 4.
I wish RPGs would just ditch inventory weight altogether, or at least most of them. Okay, it's unrealistic to lug around giant piles of stuff. Fine. If you want that to be an important element of the experience, frigging well commit to it. Have the simulation track where every single thing you're carrying is on your character, and granularly simulate their effect on your ability to fight and travel based on that position, weight, shape, etc. Make it really matter. But nobody does that. Even the games that make you mess with inventory tetris or whatever still let you carry ridiculous loads of unwieldy crap. But it would be unrealistic not to suddenly slow you to a crawl when you add a turnip to the seventeen shotguns, 6 suits of plate mail, and full service wet bar you're carrying, thus putting you 0.1 lbs over your arbitrary carrying limit, right? :P
**This comment contains minor Fallout 3 spoilers (I know the statute of limitations is up, but still). It's also too long. Sorry!**
This review is a study in game design. You rightly point out that other games do geography or settlement better than Fallout -- it seems to me as though Bethesda is leaning too heavily on their past releases. Why have fast travel? Because the last two Fallout games had it, of course. And we'd better make this one bigger, with xx thousand more lines of dialogue, because those are bullet points people expect of a "next gen" open-world game.
Nevermind that "bigger" or "more" isn't always better. It looks to me like they designed the game backwards -- creating a huge space and then trying to use every corner of it. The story (emergent and otherwise) exists in service of the game world, rather than the world being created and tuned in service of the story.
War never changes, but neither does the Wasteland. For all the purported choice that Fallout games offer, your decisions only really impact how others respond to you. You can put pockets on your armor, but you can't patch the holes in your walls.
I remember playing the "Oasis" side quest in Fallout 3 -- using the liniment to encourage the growth of the tree, and anticipating the growth and spread of the oasis beyond the small section it was already in, walled-off from the Wasteland proper by a loading screen. But of course that didn't happen. My actions had no consequence except to give me some XP and some loot, and to change the one phrase the characters in that area would say to me if I ever went back. But of course there was no reason to go back. The quest was over and from that point on, nothing would ever change. Nothing really changed anyway; there was only the illusion of progress.
My favourite quest in Fallout 3 was when you get called back to the tutorial Vault you grew up in by a radio broadcast and everything has gone to hell. I probably spent an hour in that tutorial section and now I'm back, but the Vault is no longer the well-run home I used to know. It's torn apart and the people I lived with at the beginning of the game are all dead. It felt worse than the usual death you see in the Wasteland, because this was my *home*.
But this, and quests like Megaton, are the exception. You can never change a place from a clean town to a hellhole, or vice versa. You can't improve the lot of poor town or a poor person, no matter how many caps or guns you spend with them.
I think the more real game worlds become, the more glaring the aspects that don't make sense become. In Skyrim, an NPC might let you into their house late at night if they know you, but call the guard immediately if they don't. This adds to the realism of the world. But if you steal all their gold and possessions, you don't change their life in any meaningful way. This is a classic videogame trope, of course, but it becomes harder and harder to accept when other parts of the world feel so alive and responsive.
The most egregious example of this, for me, was in Dragon Age: Origins. You're heading to some city and run across a group of refugees outside the city. They have fled the darkspawn and are poor and sick. But there are crates full of money and items all around them. They can't take these things, even though they are poor and desperate, because only you can have them. And you can't give them any gold or weapons to try to help them out, because the game won't let you. They're scenery -- nothing more. Bioware created a world that felt real, with characters who felt real, and they presented me with suffering refugees whose plight moved me, but I wasn't permitted to act upon the desire to help them that the game succeeded in instilling in me!
Anyway, as always, thanks for the insightful review, Tom. You're the best.
Saying it isn't an RPG is dumbfounded. You have choices you can make through actions and dialogue. That's what makes an RPG. No skill points. Lack of skill checks is sad but the lack of them doesn't just take away the RPG.
Don't let the New Vegas fans hear you say that.
Yeah, you kind of do have to do it. So many elements of the game design are based on fast travel, more out of convenience than any sort of game design philosophy. Bethesda did not do the job of tuning their game for people who feel fast travel detracts from the sense of place, from the atmosphere, from the survival concept. They didn't work a viable alternative into the game.
And if a game designer puts an element in the game and it becomes my job to steer clear of the element to make the game better, then I'm doing their job for them. It's not my job to make Bethesda's games better. That's the work they should be doing in the first place.
Have you tried walking around? The map is tiny, it's probably the smallest of all the Fallouts and even the Elder Scrolls, it's somewhat cleverly hidden (tiny map icons, the world being stretched in the distance) but you could jog from one corner to another in about 30 minutes, baring walls and other terrain feature slowing you down.
As such you have the option to skip a hike of usually 5-10 minute.
Something you've always had the option to do in Bethesda's games, and a lot of you critics have complimented in said games, with the exception of Morrowind (which was tiny compared to Daggerfall, and still sent you on quest on the other side of the map).
An option which you now have in plenty of other games, because it's a good option to have, it lets people walk everywhere if they are so inclined, and stumbled over interesting scenes, enemies, encounters, people and quests, but also let's people who only wanna do the missions and avoid the rather large amount of repetitive fights or distractions that you'd encounter otherwise.
Having more options, all the time is a good thing, and more game designers should spend more time on giving more options to the players. Because that's what Fast Travel is, an option, it's not the game designers fault that you are weak willed and incapable of imposing limits on your self, it's not the designers fault that you keep abusing Fast Travel, or that I'm a hoarder who is always encumbered and never has enough room to grab everything in an encounter. You chose to Fast Travel everywhere, I chose to grab everything, others chose to only use the best gear and have their character look like a clown, but it's a choice we're allowed to make, and a choice that should never be made for us. (Like how we lost the choice to have robes over our armors from Morrowind to Oblivion, because it's not balanced, in a single player game)
There is no survival concept (unless you are counting not getting killed by enemies, in which case all games with enemies are that, and some with traps) , it's Bethesda's Fallout, there was never a survival concept, not even in the originals until Obsidian introduced it, rather poorly in New Vegas, where it was justified as part of the desert-wasteland adventure. Meanwhile Bethesda got it totally wrong in Fallout 4 (with it affecting the stats of the enemies as well), and probably only put it there to draw in the additional survival fans.
Also, since you keep bringing it up: where was survival in having cars that are everywhere and never run out of fuel in State of Decay? Did you never used cars in State of Decay? Because if you did you skipped a lot of sight seeing. Where was the survival in having the worst possible defenses on all of your "bases" for a zombie apocalypse in State of Decay? (Tiny walls, gaps in the wall, blind spots, chain link fence)
There's plenty of things wrong with Fallout 4, plenty of options not given to players, plenty which were available in previous installments (why am I not allowed to use my intelligence in conversations, or my gun skill in gun related topics, why is everything a charisma check now?) that it makes your complain about having an option, not only silly, but borderline insane. Sure, let's have more devs decide for us what we want to do in our games. (I'll bet you most of them will think it involves micro transactions)
In my first playthrough, I didn't encounter a single mission "gated by resource stockpiling". Maybe if you're doing stuff for the Minutemen, who are all about the settlements.
It's not a traditional RPG. Tons of genres have RPG elements now but aren't what I would consider a traditional RPG-- the closest to F4 is GTA.
I agree wholeheartedly that the criticism of games is still in its infancy. Although I grew up on the "objective" perspectives and review scores of most early 90's game mags, so quick to turn a feature-list into a sterling recommendation, I just can't stand them anymore — I'd much rather read a personal, subjective review from someone who identifies as a real human. I've found myself drawn to the Tim Rogers, the RockPaperShotguns, and the Tevis Thompsons — of which there aren't many — so this review is a pleasant surprise! I will be exploring the rest of this website!
You can see the monorail blow up in New Vegas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You can also defuse the bomb if you complete the quest in a specific order.
This is your brain on autism.
Hahaha, you mean like the 0 choices you have with the quest and Preston Gravy? Kill Raiders/Deathclaw or No. wow, great choices. There would be like 4-5 ways to solve the situation if it were truly in-depth in choices like actually TALKING to the Raiders.
Surprising that People are 'ok' with a 6 or 7 Fallout game, which is exactly what it is. As in people don't really want a 9 or 10 Fallout game anymore. Screw reading, screw great dialogue, screw choices that matter/are unique - let's just have an average game about shooting things. This series is becoming more simplified and boring.
Ah, very cool, Ryan! But that hurts my eyes after playing Fallout 4. Argh, the lo-res, it burns!
You know, the more I think about it, the more I wonder why Bethesda is bothering with weight at all. I mean, I guess you need something to do with the strength stat for people who aren't using melee builds. But still, if they're going to make ammo weigh zero pounds, it's a pretty short step to then eliminate the hassle of weight management altogether.
At any rate, my problem isn't weight management per se. It's poorly thought out weight management. I don't necessarily agree with how far you're pushing it, but I agree with your comment about "frigging well commit to it". :)
Your wife should design the next Fallout game.